Author: Lauren Davis

The Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz will be returning to our screens in the 2019 New Year’s Special, followed by a new series in early 2020.

Titled Resolution, the special promises to see our heroes encounter what the Thirteenth Doctor describes as “the most dangerous creature in the universe”. This has led many to speculate that the creature in question is a Dalek, although this is still unconfirmed at the time of writing. You can make up your own mind by watching the trailer below.

Three guest stars have also been announced for the episode, with Charlotte Ritchie playing “Lin”, Nikesh Patel playing “Mitch” and Daniel Adegboyega playing “Aaron”.

The ABC has confirmed that it will be screening the New Year’s Special on Wednesday 2 January at 7:30pm. The episode will also be available on iview from the early hours of the morning, immediately after its broadcast in the UK.

And the Team TARDIS will be back again in 2020, with Series 12 of the programme set to air “early” in the year according to the BBC.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall said “We’re off again! Well we never actually stopped – as Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and friends have been winning the hearts of families across the nation this autumn, we’ve been busy with a whole new set of action packed adventures for the Thirteenth Doctor. We adore making this show and have been blown away by the response from audiences, so we can’t wait to bring more scares, more monsters and more Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole to BBC One. Brilliant!”

Charlotte Moore, Director of Content added, “We’re delighted that the Doctor and her friends will be returning to thrill audiences in 2020. I know Chris and the whole team are already working on a whole new set of exciting adventures. In the meantime we’ve got a very special episode on New Year’s Day for everyone to enjoy.”

Issue #241 of Data Extract, the official magazine of the Doctor Who Club of Australia, is now in the mail for all DWCA members!

Along with all our regular features, the new issue features an interview with none other than Mandip Gill (aka Yasmin “Yaz” Khan), as well as with Big Finish writer Emma Reeves. There’s also fiction for the Thirteenth Doctor and co, and a Christmas special comic featuring the Eleventh Doctor, original companion Eleanor and a surprise guest…!

The new issue is available exclusively to DWCA members, so click here to sign up today. Select back issues of the magazine can also be purchased from the DWCA Shop.

The BBC have announced that Second Doctor serial The Macra Terror, which has been completely missing from the archives since not long after its original broadcast back in 1967, has been animated for release on digital download, DVD and Blu-ray.

The four-part story sees the Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Ben (Michael Craze), Polly (Anneke Wills) and Jamie (Frazer Hines) unravel a mystery on a human colony world in the far future. But while the colony has the vibe of a giant holiday camp, one of their number swears the colony is being terrorised by giant clawed creatures that only come out at night…

While no full episodes of this serial are known to have survived on film, a complete audio recording of all four parts still exists. Now, the episodes have been brought back to life in both colour as well as the original black and white, with the DVD and Blu-ray release set to include special features including an animation gallery, behind-the-scenes film and audio commentary.

Check out the teaser trailer for the story below!

The Macra Terror will be available on digital download, DVD, Blu-ray and special edition Steelbook in the UK on 18 March 2019; an Australian release date is yet to be announced. A special screening will also be held at the BFI Southbank, London on 16 March.

The Macra Terror isn’t the first Second Doctor story to receive the animation treatment, with an animated version of The Power of Daleks released in late 2016. The debut story for Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, it is available on DVD and Blu-ray from the DWCA Shop.

Series 11 may be drawing to a close, but the DWCA Book Club is not quite ready to say goodbye to the Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz. That’s why our next book is the first in a new trilogy of novels released by BBC Books: The Good Doctor, by Juno Dawson.

On the planet of Lobos, the Doctor halts a violent war between the native Loba and human colonists. Job done, the TARDIS crew departs – only for Ryan to discover he’s left his phone behind. Again.

Available from all good bookshops, The Good Doctor will be discussed at the DWCA Book Club meeting on Friday 1 February. You can also comment on our Facebook page if you can’t make the event.

Do you consider yourself something of an armchair critic? Send us a written review of the current Book Club text, and your words just may end up published in our club fanzine, Data Extract. What’s more, you will go into the running to win a $5 voucher to spend at the DWCA Shop!

The ABC has confirmed that it will be screening the upcoming Doctor Who New Year’s Special on Wednesday 2 January at 7:30pm.

The episode will also be available on iview from the early hours of the morning, immediately after its broadcast in the UK.

It was announced last month that the special would take place over the New Year rather than the now-traditional Christmas period, ending a run of Christmas specials that had been unbroken since 2005 (with 2009/10 containing both Christmas and New Year’s specials with The End of Time Parts 1 and 2).

The new special has been written by Chris Chibnall and directed by Wayne Yip, with a synopsis as follows:

As the New Year begins, a terrifying evil is stirring from across the centuries of Earth’s history. As the Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz return home, will they be able to overcome the threat to planet Earth?

In celebration of Doctor Who’s 55th anniversary, the DWCA is delighted to announce that our final day event of 2018 will feature a special guest – actress Louise Pajo, who starred in Second Doctor serial The Seeds of Death almost 50 years ago!

Graduating from RADA in the mid-60s, Louise Pajo appeared in classic UK shows such as The Avengers and UFO in addition to Doctor Who. In The Seeds of Death she played Gia Kelly, manager of T-Mat Earth Control, who found herself facing the fearsome Ice Warriors in their second TV appearance.

After emigrating to Australia, Louise appeared in top Aussie shows of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, including Prisoner: Cell Block H, The Flying Doctors, A Country Practice, Cop Shop and Carson’s Law. We look forward to talking to her about her experiences making television in different decades and countries!

There will also be trivia on the day as we hold a Doctor Who edition of The Chase, the quiz show hosted in the UK by none other than Bradley Walsh (Thirteenth Doctor companion Graham O’Brien). Participants will be invited to correctly anwer a series of questions while facing off against a rival “chaser” – and we are very pleased to announce that our chaser on the day will be comedian and Whovians researcher, Pat Magee.

Finally, get excited for our anniversary auction, giving you the chance to pick up rare, out-of-print and signed merchandise including books, audio dramas, DVD box sets, prints and more. If you have something you’d like us to auction off on your behalf, get in touch with us at events@doctorwhoaustralia.org – we’d be happy to consider it.

It’s an exciting and tumultuous time to be a Doctor Who fan, with a new season launching and Jodie Whittaker’s journey just beginning. If you feel inspired by everything going on, why not get creative and send a submission to DWCA Publishing?

We are always on the lookout for fan art, comics, articles, stories and reviews to be included in our flagship magazine, Data Extract (DE), as well as our yearbook, Zerinza. And there are rewards aplenty for those whose work is selected!

Contributors who write an article or story, or provide art pages for an issue of DE, will be provided with a physical contributor copy (please note this does not include letters or reviews). Should the contributor be a club member, this means an additional issue will be added to their membership end date. All contributing members will also go into the running to win a special prize each issue, with the winner to be selected by the editorial team.

Contributors to Zerinza will meanwhile be provided with an electronic contributor copy, as this is primarily an electronic publication.

Australian readers will soon be able to experience the exploits of the Thirteenth Doctor and her friends in written form, with the release this month of three new novels from BBC Books: The Good Doctor, Molten Heart and Combat Magicks.

The first of these, The Good Doctor, was conceived by award-winning author Juno Dawson, who has made her name as a writer of edgy YA fiction and was named a “Queen of Teen” in 2014. Dawson came to Sydney a few months ago as part of a tour promoting her latest book, and during the Q&A session we were lucky enough to hear a few anecdotes about how she came to be involved in the Whoniverse.

Dawson’s big break came about in one of the most unexpected places – at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest. She was attending the event with a friend, who just happened to know James Goss – a long-time writer and producer for Doctor Who, these days kept busy with regular work at Big Finish Productions. At the time, Goss was looking for writers for Big Finish’s new Torchwood audio drama range, being developed with Russell T Davies and set to take place after Miracle Day. Before she knew it, Dawson was sent an offer to write for the series: an opportunity too good to miss.

The series eventually came to be known as Aliens Among Us and saw Torchwood return to its home in Cardiff with the introduction of several new team members – including the alien Orr, a gender-neutral, genetically engineered sexual psychomorph who changes their appearance based on the desire of whoever is in their company. Created by Davies, Orr’s introductory episode was written by Dawson – a writer who could relate to Orr on some level given her own identity as a transgender woman.

While Dawson was initially recruited to work on Aliens Among Us, production on the series was somewhat delayed, particularly due to the limited availability of stars John Barrowman and Eve Myles. In the meantime she was commissioned to write another story, this time for the Torchwood single-disc range. This was The Dollhouse, part of the “expanded” Torchwood universe which sees the organisation pop up in times and places other than 21st century Cardiff. In the case of The Dollhouse, the setting is 1970s Los Angeles and the heroes are three brave and beautiful young women. The result is a fun and clever homage to Charlie’s Angels with a very Torchwood twist.

But while Torchwood is the only Doctor Who spin-off that Dawson has written for to date, she came very close to writing for another. She revealed during the event that she was actually commissioned to write for the (never-produced) second season of Class, the spin-off series set at Coal Hill Academy and originally broadcast in 2016. The first season was written entirely by creator Patrick Ness, who is himself a prominent YA author, and he was keen to get others like himself on board for the show’s second season – in spite of the fact that the BBC were pushing for more established screenwriters.

But Ness persisted, with Dawson and several other YA authors eventually commissioned prior to the broadcast of the show’s first season. Dawson even visited the set in preparation of writing her episode, noting with amusement that the show’s stars were several years older than their teenage counterparts. Unfortunately, the first season received mixed reviews and low viewing figures – something which Dawson attributes to the BBC’s decision to debut the show on the online channel BBC Three, before repeating it late at night on BBC One several months later. So while she still knows exactly what her episode was going to be about, the BBC’s decision to cancel the series means she sadly may never have the chance to write it.

So what of her new novel, The Good Doctor? Dawson was not able to share a great deal, with the event having taken place weeks before the series launch date was even announced. She did however reveal that she was able to view three minutes of Series 11 footage as part of her research process, leading her to describe the Thirteenth Doctor as “immediate”. She also admitted that, as the Doctor was the primary focus of the footage, characterising the other leads involved a bit of guesswork. The BBC clearly had a lot of faith in Dawson’s writing ability, and given all the stories she shared over the course of the event, we’re inclined to agree!

The Good Doctor is available now as an e-book. It will be released in Australia as an audiobook on 15 November and in hardback form on 19 November, alongside Molten Heart and Combat Magicks.

IMPRESSIONIST and comedian Jon Culshaw is one of two new additions to the Big Finish family, taking on one of the most famous roles in Who history.

Culshaw, who shot to fame in the shows Spitting Image and Dead Ringers, will take on the iconic role of UNIT commanding officer Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, originally portrayed by the late Nicholas Courtney.

Culshaw will feature in The Third Doctor Adventures Volume Five, alongside Tim Treloar as the Doctor and the legendary Katy Manning reprising her role as Jo Grant.

After an extensive casting process, senior producer David Richardson and executive producer Nick Briggs finally remembered a conversation they’d had with Culshaw, when he told them the thing he’d most like to do for Big Finish would be to play the Brigadier.

“After checking his rendition of the character in the BBC audiobook of The Five Doctors, we just gave him the job!” Nick explained.

“It was a very tricky thing casting someone to do justice to Nicholas Courtney’s brilliant, original performance. Jon has done this with honour and love for what the splendid Mr Courtney did all those years ago.”

The job of recasting the Third Doctor’s first companion Liz Shaw was a little easier, with Daisy Ashford – daughter of the original Liz, Caroline John – following in her mother’s footsteps.

“I’m really excited and honoured to have been asked to play Liz, and to step into my Mum’s brilliant shoes!”

Also returning is the original Sergeant Benton, John Levene, who most recently appeared for Big Finish in UNIT: Assembled, available now from the DWCA Shop.

The first of the two new adventures, Primord by John Dorney, sees the Primords (from TV story Inferno) interrupt the Doctor and Liz Shaw’s reunion, and become one of the fiercest tests of UNIT and the Doctor to date. Then, in The Scream of Ghosts by Guy Adams, the population of a village are apparently being spirited away in the oddest of manners.

The chameleonic Culshaw will also be providing the voice for another of the Doctor’s friends – appropriately enough, the shape-shifting android Kamelion!

Briefly serving as a companion to the Fifth Doctor, and operated by computer technology on the studio floor, the screentime of the original Kamelion was sadly cut short by the tragic death of its operator, Mike Power. Now the character is being given a new chance at life on audio, starring in three upcoming adventures in Big Finish’s Doctor Who Main Range alongside Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough.

“He’s a very elegant soul, Kamelion,” said Jon. “A cross between C3PO and a suit of armour. He was sinister, and had a graceful presence about him, it was beautifully unnerving. A fascinating character.”

The new Third and Fifth Doctor adventures will be available through the DWCA Shop next year.

The first episode of Series 11, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, is premiering in Australia on Monday 8 October – and to celebrate, the DWCA’s Sydney local group is going to the movies!

The feature-length first episode sees Jodie Whittaker take control of the TARDIS as the Thirteenth Doctor, along with a new line-up of friends, including Bradley Walsh as Graham, Tosin Cole as Ryan and Mandip Gill as Yasmin. Cinema-goers have the chance to go behind the scenes of the eleventh series, with additional footage including exclusive interviews with Jodie, showrunner Chris Chibnall and the first episode’s director Jamie Childs.

Representatives of the DWCA Sydney local group will be attending screenings at the following locations (all screenings commence at 6pm):